Streamline Your Deployments: Building a CI/CD Pipeline for .NET 6 Web Apps with Azure DevOps

Managing deployments for .NET 6 web applications can be streamlined through automation. This article explores setting up a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline in Azure DevOps. We'll guide you through creating a project, repository, and pipeline to automate the build, test, and deployment process for your web application to Azure App Service.

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1. Setting the Stage: Project and Repository in Azure DevOps

• Navigate to the Azure DevOps portal (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops) and sign in with your Microsoft account.
• Click on "Create project" to create a new project for your web application (or use an existing one).
• Choose a descriptive name for your project (e.g., "MyApp-CI-CD").
• Select the desired visibility (public or private) for your project.
• Click "Create" to provision your Azure DevOps project.

Creating a Git Repository:

• Within your project, navigate to "Repos" and click "Create."
• Choose "Git" as the version control system.
• Optionally, you can initialize an empty Git repository or connect to an existing Git repository hosted elsewhere (e.g., GitHub).

2. Building the Pipeline: Defining the Workflow

• Navigate to "Pipelines" within your project and click "Create pipeline."
• Choose "Starter pipeline" and select "Azure Repos Git" as the repository source.

Connecting Your Code:

• Authorize Azure DevOps to access your Git repository.
• Select the repository you created earlier (or the one containing your .NET 6 web app code).

Understanding the Pipeline Stages:

The default starter pipeline provides two pre-defined stages:

• Get sources: This stage retrieves the code from your Git repository.
• Build: This stage (typically) executes build commands to compile and package your application.

We'll modify these stages and add additional ones for testing and deployment.

3. Configuring the Pipeline Tasks: Building and Testing

Modifying the Build Stage:

• Click on the "Build" stage and navigate to the "Tasks" tab.
• Under "Agent pool," choose the appropriate agent pool with the necessary build tools installed (e.g., "Microsoft-hosted agent pool").
• Click the "+" icon to add a task and search for "dotnet build."
• Configure the "dotnet build" task by specifying the path to your .csproj file (typically located at the root of your repository). This task will compile your .NET 6 web application.

Optional: Adding Unit Tests:

• If your web application includes unit tests, you can add additional tasks to the build stage.
• Search for tasks related to your chosen unit testing framework (e.g., "dotnet test" for xUnit).
• Configure these tasks to execute your unit tests during the build stage, ensuring code quality before deployment.

4. Deployment to Azure App Service: Reaching Production

Adding the Deployment Stage:

• Click the "+" icon next to the "Build" stage and choose "Azure App Service deploy" (or a similar task depending on your Azure DevOps version).

Configuring Deployment Settings:

• Provide a connection name (e.g., "MyWebAppServiceConnection").
• Click "New" to create a service connection and choose "Azure Resource Manager."
• Authorize Azure DevOps to access your Azure subscription.
• Choose the Azure subscription containing your target App Service.
• Under "App service name," select the Azure App Service where you want to deploy your web application (you can create a new App Service beforehand in the Azure portal).
• Under "Package or folder," specify the path to the output folder containing your compiled web application files (typically located under "bin/Release/PublishOutput" after a successful build).

Deployment Trigger:

• Under "Continuous deployment trigger," choose "Enable continuous deployment" to automatically trigger deployments upon code pushes to your Git repository.

5. Putting it All Together: Continuous Delivery Pipeline

With the pipeline configured, here's the workflow that unfolds upon a code push:

1. The code push triggers the pipeline execution.
2. The pipeline retrieves the code from your Git repository.
3. The build stage compiles your .NET 6 web application (and optionally executes unit tests).
4. The deployment stage packages the application and deploys it to the specified Azure App Service.

By enabling continuous deployment, your web application automatically updates in Azure App Service with every code push, ensuring a streamlined and efficient deployment process.